Mitra catches the compass with some caution, lest his talons scratch or impale the toy item. His focus was on not dropping the item - and so he looks up a little too late to realize Abberline is pointing a gun at him and Kendra.

He has no idea if Kendra's alright - he can feel the bullets attempt to pierce his hide before ultimately dropping. He's been knocked back a few inches, and he's going to bruise badly, he knows this from past experience. Just because he received the wound as a demon didn't keep the wounds from manifesting when he turned back into a human. Why had the ghost thrown the compass to him?

Yes, he gets whiny when hurt. Sue him.

He hisses loudly, baring his teeth as he does, and then spits his corrosive venom, aiming at Abberline's arm. He really doesn't enjoy getting shot, and he has no desire to get shot again.

Grace

Grace hadn't been thinking. As soon as she saw Abberline aim at Kendra, she immediately acted. She manifested enough to touch and be heard once again on instinct to shout, "No!"

She immediately grabbed the gun in Abberline's hands and tried to move. His fire managed to hit Mitra, but thankfully, she was able to keep Kendra from getting shot....

....At the cost of her own corpus.

She let out a pained cry as blood mysteriously spattered from her invisible corpus and onto Abberline and his gun. The shots had torn through her stomach and abdomen. She bore through the pain as best as she can, and she spoke to Abberline,

"If I wasn't here, you would have killed someone from the Mortality Faction. How much more blood must be spilt until you are satisfied, Abberline?! Because quite frankly, you're just begging to be haunted,"

In the grand scheme of things that mattered to Kendra, her own life and safety ranked fairly low. However, she also wasn't an idiot: of the four in Abberline's line of fire, she was definitely the most vulnerable. Mitra had already told them about the sturdiness of his demonic form, Grace was already dead, and Misty probably had some spells on hand that could protect her, or at least mitigate the damage. Kendra, however, was just a squishy mortal, and while her visions did give her more of a heads up that what most people got, they were still limited.

It was for this reason, when Kendra received their premonition of someone else drawing Abberline's fire that they decided to let it happen. After all, Abberline likely only had normal bullets on him, right? He couldn't do that much damage to any of their companions... right?

Wrong. Apparently, when fully manifested, ghosts were as vulnerable to gunshots as a flesh and blood person, as Kendra witnessed when Grace took the bullet for them. Any colour Kendra had in their pale face drained away as they watched Grace's blood splatter across the room, and clenched the gun they were holding before pointing, much more confidently than before, at Abberline.

"Get the fuck out now, or I swear to whatever god that exists that I will shoot you," they said, barely managing to keep themself from raising their voice. It was the most emotion Mitra, and probably also Misty, had likely ever seen from Kendra in the whole time they had known them.

"Fuck!" Misty shouted, clapping her hands over her ears against the thundering report of the gun. It rang tinnily in her ears as it echoed around the excellent acoustics of her dance studio. The demon thing appeared to have hocked a gobbet of acid onto the hunter, which was both badass and disgusting in approximately equal terms. She then realized that Kendra, who to Misty's knowledge had never fired a gun before, was point a shotgun in the general direction of a man standing right next to her. It didn't take a genius to realize that if she didn't get the holy blue fuck out of here the best she could hope for was an ass full of buckshot.

"Telos!" she shouted and vanished in a puff of chalk dust, reappearing in the reception area with a thunderous sneeze. She shoved her hand into the pocket of a jacket hanging on the door and pulled out her glock. It had been a gift from a pimp who had tried to add Misty to his stable after word got around about that oh so hilarious solicitation charge. Well if by gift you meant took it out of his bag after she had creatively rewired his memories in such a way that inspired him to find a new line of work. The words 'I cast fireball' had been scratched into the slide in clumsy block letters and then filled in with red nail polish during a subsequent arts and craft hour. She flicked off the safety and whirled back to what was fast becoming the murder on the dance floor, or at any rate a Tchaikovsky cover of it.

"If I wasn't here, you would have killed someone from the Mortality Faction. How much more blood must be spilt until you are satisfied, Abberline?! Because quite frankly, you're just begging to be haunted,"

"Mortality?" Abberline says in response to Grace's words, more concerned by the presence of someone from each faction than he was by anything else she has told him. Distracted by these words, Abberline is unable to avoid Mitra's acid spit. As the weaponized saliva makes contact with his arm, Abberline cries out in shock and pain. He lets go of his rifle to clutch at his injured limb, unknowingly leaving the weapon in Grace's grasp. Abberline then turns away further from Grace to look at Kendra as they make their threat. Abberline regards the three visible people in the room with a nervous look on his face. He had come here looking to spook some information out of a wizard, but now he has more to deal with than he expected. The night is not panning out well for him.

And then Misty teleports away.

Abberline's apprehension vanishes in an instant when this happens, total confidence taking its place. "Dearie me. It looks like the witch wasn't as friendly with you as I thought." Abberline says as he turns fully to face Mitra and Kendra, shaking the dissolving clothing off of his arm to reveal the unharmed flesh underneath. "Hard luck, you two. You were going to need her." As he says that, Abberline reaches into his jacket and withdraws a long chain of blades and mace heads. Made of a metal that Mitra instinctively knows to be of holy origin. "As much as I'd love to kill a demon tonight, I'd be to exhausted to chase my real prey afterwards. So how about you just hand me that compass and I'll get out of your hair."

At this point, Kendra wasn't really thinking about the prophecy or that Misty had just abandoned the group. Their mind was so muddled with anger, adrenaline and, of course, guilt, that they weren't really thinking at all as they raised the gun at Abberline. "I fucking warned you, asshole," they said, just as they pulled the trigger.

Misty reappeared in a cloud of multicolored chalk dust. She sneezed violently and then leveled the pistol.

"Sorry, left my asshole repellant in my other pants," she explained. Still on a high from the arcane forces swirling in the air, she opened fire, muzzle flash painting long bottles of flame in the dusty air.

In retrospect, maybe getting shot at again would've been alright.

Mitra stares down the weapon, his twitching tail betraying his fear. He doesn't know why Abberline wants this compass so badly, or what he's planning on hunting tonight. Maybe it'd be for the best to return the compass. Their plan was impulsive and contingent on several factors, none of which seem to have panned out. But also, giving Abberline the compass feels like letting him win. Like he and the spirit got shot for no damn reason. Like he handed over his shotgun and trusted these people for nothing.

Then the shotgun goes off. Then the handgun.

Mitra yelps and feels his hand contract. Hears a crunch. Feels pain. It turns out the sound of a shotgun and a gun going off in rapid succession is actually quite startling when you're not the one pulling the trigger. He opens his hand to reveal, to himself and Abberline, assuming Abberline's even capable of paying attention at this point, the broken toy compass.

Some magic could probably fix it. But that's a resource Abberline doesn't have the most regular access to, Mitra's pretty sure.

As the bullets fly, Abberline lets out a cry. But it is a cry of frustration over the compass being destroyed rather than a cry of pain from being shot so many times. For while several shots find their mark, most of the bullets miss and the few shots that do strike true either graze the hunter or hit the Kevlar beneath his clothes. The worst of the few injuries Abberline receives from the barrage is when Misty shoots the ring finger from his left hand. Kendra is quick to realize what is happening. The Winds of Fate have kicked up a Vortex of Coincidence around Abberline. Unless he stands before the alliance fated to defeat him, no fatal blow may land. And from the look on his face, Abberline has just realized that Grace's words about Kendra being from Mortality aren't true.

Before he can act on this realization however the flash of red and blue light outside, accompanied by a siren song all too familiar to city dwellers, heralds the arrival of the law. It seems that Trinity heard the sound of gunfire from the car and called in back up. "I only wanted a way to track my prey." Abberline says to you all. "But you just had to make things harder than they needed to be didn't you?" He then addresses one final sentence to Misty. "When I'm done with the Trader, nowhere will be safe for you, witch!" With that said, Abberline sinks through the floor and vanishes from sight in a manner that Grace will realize to be quite similar to her own ability to pass through solid objects.

"Are you fucking kidding me!?" Kendra shouted in frustration as neither their nor Misty's shots seemed to do much damage to Abberline. She didn't seem to be shouting at the Hunter himself, rather the universe in general. Even the sound of the police and Abberline's supernatural disappearance didn't seem to quell their rage, as they turned to nearest table and gave it a small kick. "Fuck!" they shouted, again not at anyone in particular. "I. Fuckin'. Hate. Prophecies." They shook their head before turning to Grace, and at the sight of the injured ghost, their rage quickly disappated into a much more familiar mixture of exhaustion, frustration and concern. They went over to the spirit. "I am so sorry. I really didn't think things would go to such shit." They looked her up and down. "How... do you feel? Can you stand... or float, or whatever it is you do?" It was clear from their tone they had no idea what to do in this situation. Again, ghosts were very much not in Kendra's wheelhouse.

“The enemy cannot pull a trigger… if you disable his hand,” Misty misquoted, bending down and picking up Abberline’s finger. She took a zip lock bag from her cargo pants and bagged it up before tucking it away.

“I fucking love that movie,” she admitted, then made a sensual growl in the back of her throat. “Casper Van Dien, damn!” The haze of gun smoke and the scent of ectoplasm hung heavy in the air and she looked down at her own smoking pistol as though surprised to find it there. Her hand was trembling slightly and she suddenly felt a desperate need for some chocolate ice-cream and a bottle of tequila. The approaching sirens didn’t afford her the option.



“I don’t want to seem ungrateful or a bad host,” she went on, hastily scooping up casings and shoving them into her pockets.

“But I can’t be here when those cops arrive, pretty sure my parole officer will take a dim view of me being found at the scene of a shootout,” she explained, then cast a glance at Mitra, “Not to mention, consorting with ‘ye olde powers of darkness’ or whatever the fuck is going on here.”

Mitra drops the pieces of the compass, his other hand dragging down across his face. Were it not for his scales, he likely would have left significant claw marks. "Christ." He looked at Misty. "What'd you do to be on his bad side? Besides exist." The Hunter seems to really have it out for Misty, judging by his parting words and the fact that it wasn't even her who ultimately ruined the compass.

He seems to come to a realization, though, and moves over to Kendra. "First, jacket and shotgun if you don't mind. Unless you feel like explaining those to the police. Second, you need to get a story straight and get out there before they come in here and see a ghost and a demon." Already he's looking around for hiding spaces. After all, it's not like the entire police force is familiar with the supernatural beings roaming their city, and even those who are aren't guaranteed to be friendly. If there's a Hunter among them, Mitra's in trouble and the spirit is probably screwed. Ghosts aren't his wheelhouse either, but he can tell she's badly injured. One more bad blow from someone with ill intentions would - could ghosts even die again? Or would something else happen? Mitra doesn't know and doesn't care to find out.

Grace

Grace held the gun she took from Abberline and simply pointed it at him during the entire encounter. But she never pulled the trigger. She knew the pain and the experience of dying by bullets. She wasn't so inclined to subject another person to that fate.

Though, to her surprise, it seems like Abberline might already be dead, because he just phased through the floor to escape!

Because she opted to remain invisible, nobody could see her shocked face as she recognized that method of escape. But thanks to the gun she was holding, Kendra was able to walk up to her. What better way to tell where an invisible person was than a floating item?

She answered Kendra, with a groan at first, "Owww...I'm fine. I just...That really hurts. I'm still standing..."

She gave a chuckle and she asked, "How about you? Better I get shot than...well, anyone alive, right? I'm still new to this whole...'ghost' thing,"

Then Kendra and Mitra spoke up about getting out of there. She nods, even if that couldn't be seen, and she answers, "Right...I'm still 'missing', so I don't think letting anyone else know I'm here is a good idea. Maybe dropping this manifestation can help heal me? Either way, I'll be staying close by..."

After she says that, she drops the manifestation and the gun clatters to the ground uselessly.

"Oh, err, right," Kendra said in response to Mitra asking for his jacket and gun back. She'd been so hyped on adrenaline and rage she'd completely forgotten. She handed his stuff back to him. "Thanks, by the way. For backing me up." They grimaced before adding, "Sorry it didn't go... quite the way I planned."

They turned back to Grace. "Yeah, I'm fine, thanks to you." They wanted to say more than that. They were somewhere in between wanting to apologize profusely to Grace and wanting to scold her for her reckless behaviour, but as their companions had pointed out, this really wasn't the time.

Grace then decided to de-materialize, causing the gun she'd taken from Abberline to drop to the ground. Kendra immediately backed off, flinching in case the gun suddenly went off. When nothing happened, they lowered their arms and hissed a curse under their breath. They added 'gun-safety' to the list of things they'd have to talk to Grace about once they got out of here. However, there was one thing they wanted to address before they did anything else. They turned to Misty. "Hey, so, err, are you okay? Do you, erm, have anywhere else to stay since your hideout is now..." They gestured around themself. "You know, compromised?"

Mitra takes the jacket and gun with a grunt. "You can't choose what your visions say." He pauses, eyes Kendra with some skepticism, and then shakes his head and slithers over to Misty. "If you're leaving, I have a message before you go." He pulls the scroll out of the jacket and hands it off to her. "I think the powers of darkness have already found you. Take it from me, the deals aren't as glamorous as they seem." As if for emphasis, all the eyes below his waist blink independently of each other. "Also, if you could point me to a corner where I can hide and regrow my legs for the next five minutes, I'd be much obliged." It's clear he's not being that serious about feeling obliged, but says it out of habit rather than a promise of a debt.

Misty opened one eye, relieved that the dropped shotgun hadn’t gone off and done what Abberline had failed to do. Letting out a sigh she opened the other. She could at least hope the cops would be there in a few minutes. This was a bad neighborhood afterall.



“Other than an open invite to a sarcophagus, I’m afraid not. I can probably hole up in a motel for a few days though,” she replied to Kendra. Abberline had made it sound like he was going to take care of Trader first which meant she had a few days before he was likely to show up here. Maybe if she tipped Trader off he could exchange Abberline’s liver for a sack of kitty litter or something equally useful.



She gave the demon thing a long level look. She took the scroll from him and bounced it in her palm.



“No harm ever came from reading a book right?” she asked, not at all certain that becoming pen pals with Beelzebub was a good idea.

"There is a changing room back there," she told Mitra, making a gesture to the rear of the studio.

"Just don't use the one with tinsel on the door it's a por... I'm just don't use that one."



Figure out Mitra (11) -Hold 2

Spend 1 to figure out how I can put Mitra in my debt

Saving one for later..

Kendra raised an eyebrow at the sarcophagus line, not sure whether it was Misty's sense of humour or a genuine fact, but decided it was best not to ask. Instead, they pointed with their thumb to outside the studio where they assumed Trinity was still waiting. "Well, err, I'd have to talk it out with my roommate, but we have a couch if you needed somewhere to crash," they said. "Our apartment has three living people and one ghost - you met Grace already. It'd be a bit crammed but..." They shrugged, clearly feeling awkward about offering a place to stay to someone they admittedly didn't know that well. However, they felt they at least owed Misty the option considering their less-than-stellar rescue attempt. "I don't know, considering what you've just been through, you might want the company."

@XxFellsingxX @Candykane
As the conversation continues, you two suddenly notice that the floor has become blanketed in a fine layer of mist that rolled in from under a nearby door. As you look down at this mist, it strikes you that some vampires have the ability to turn into and travel as a cloud of mist. With this it mind, it comes as no shock to either up you when the mist rises into a trio of columns before dispersing to reveal a trio of vampires in police uniforms, a young albino brunette dual wielding a pair of 9mm Glocks, a fair haired black man of indeterminate age bringing to bear a Walther PPK, and an older man with greying black hair pointing a light cavalry saber at the group. "Good evening." The senior officer speaks with a deep southern drawl. "If you would kindly lay your weapons down and place your hands behind your head, my colleagues I would greatly appreciate your compliance."

@XxFellsingxX
Having noticed the vampire's approach, you would be on guard enough to realize thanks to your connections to Trinity that these vampires are part of the Copper Web, a vampire clan that is intertwined with the city's police force. Knowing this, you are fairly certain that name dropping Trinity would put them in a more agreeable mood.

Grace

Grace noticed the mist, and before she could manifest again and warn anybody, the mist formed into three policemen! She watched this event take place, and she looked to her Kendra, Misty, and Mitra, waiting for them to act first before she does anything else.

While taking in the events that occur, she keeps a hand over the wounds she just received, not just to cover them, but also to see if they were healing while she remained ghostly.

It took a lot of restraint for Kendra not to heave a loud sigh when she caught sight of the Copper Web members. She'd been hoping to just to have to deal with regular cops. After the confrontation with Abberline, she wasn't sure how much more supernatural politics she could take tonight. The universe really wasn't making things easy for her today.

Still, it wasn't the worst thing. She felt she knew enough about these guys that she could potentially stop this from getting out of hand. "Good evening, officers," they said, raising their hands to show they had no weapons on them. Not anymore, at least. "I'm Kendra Molony, Trinity Abrams' roommate? I'm pretty sure she's the one who called you about..." They motioned around themself vaguely. "All this." They paused before adding, "I just want to start by saying that nobody who is currently in this room was the one who started this."